'Wicked' star Cynthia Erivo opens up on romantic relationships

Wicked star Cynthia Erivo has revealed why she keeps her relationships to herself.

In a joint interview with her Wicked co-star Ariana Grande for Vanity Fair's November 2024 issue, Erivo said: “I’m very tight-lipped with my relationships, ’cause I don’t think that my relationship is for anyone else but for me.”

“I spend so much of my life sharing everything — whether it’s my work or my soul or my life in speeches. I think I give enough of myself that I’m allowed to keep something for me.”

The actress noted that "maybe I’ll change my mind at some point.”

"It’s enough for people to know that I’m a queer person who could have relationships with men or women or neither," the two time Oscar nominee said.

Erivo has previously spoken about her experience being secretly queer. During her speech at the Los Angeles LGBT Center Gala, while accepting the Rand Schrader Award, she said that “claiming my queerness in public, and particularly in the public eye has meant taking a risk in order to claim my freedom."

She gushed that it is "a privilege to be on this stage tonight because for so long I lived in deep admiration of anyone who could fully embody their true, authentic self, wear their queerness like a feather boa and proudly say, 'This is a beautiful part of who I am.' "

"I used to say that it felt like I was looking at my own community from inside a glass box," she continued. "They were vibrant and beautiful, falling in love. And I had my nose pressed up against the glass, looking out at all of you, separate and apart."

She added: "It took time for me to outgrow my box, but time is a gift that gives us space to see ourselves clearly enough to know that denying a part of oneself is a disservice to the whole being. And now, the glass is shattered and there is no glass in sight. And I have walked out into the wide-open spaces, into the arms of you all, and it feels like home."

Cynthia Erivo stars alongside Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Bowen Yang, and more in Wicked, which is set to hit theaters on November 22.